Её слова остры, как нож —
И яркостью своей —
Задели каждый голый нерв,
Проникнув до костей —
Она не занала — что сразит —
То — не было войной —
Но выдала гримасой плоть —
Что чувствует живой —
Невежливо — боль вызывать —
Глазам уже не зреть
Обычай есть в Бессмертии —
Замкнувшись — умереть —
479
She dealt her pretty words like Blades —
How glittering they shone —
And every One unbarred a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone —
She never deemed — she hurt —
That — is not Steel's Affair —
A vulgar grimace in the Flesh —
How ill the Creatures bear —
To Ache is human — not polite —
The Film upon the eye
Mortality's old Custom —
Just locking up — to Die.
Emily Dickinson
<<Biographer Richard Sewall, as well as other scholars, believes Dickinson was writing about her friend and sister-in-law Sue Dickinson. This would have been about the time the two’s friendship hit a low point and Emily avoided going to Sue’s house (one hundred yards away) for nearly fifteen years. People who knew Sue mentioned her sharp tongue, and Emily’s sister Vinnie was firmly convinced that Sue’s behaviour to Emily had shortened the poet’s life considerably.
Be that as it may, the poem succeeds with or without a biographical reading. Was it Rumpole who said of his wife, “She has a sharp wit and wields it like an axe”?>>
S. Kornfeld
Стихи.ру 17 октября 2012 года